Cin7

Starting an e-commerce business sounds simple at first.

Pick a product. Build a Shopify store. Run some ads. Start selling.

But once orders actually start coming in, operations become the real challenge.

A lot of growing brands hit issues with:

• Inventory tracking across channels

• Forecasting demand

• Managing suppliers and lead times

• Keeping stock synced between Shopify, Amazon, retail, etc.

• Manual spreadsheets eating up hours every week

One thing we see often is that brands focus heavily on launching… but not enough on what happens after growth starts.

The businesses that scale well usually get a few things right early:

• They choose a specific niche instead of trying to sell to everyone

• They validate demand before overinvesting in inventory

• They prioritize mobile + customer experience

• They automate operations before things become chaotic

That’s also where systems like Cin7 usually come in, helping centralize inventory, purchasing, forecasting, and multi-channel operations as brands grow.

Biggest lesson we’ve seen: selling products is one challenge. Running the operations behind those sales is a completely different one.

Most product businesses start with spreadsheets. And honestly, early on, they work fine.

But then something changes:

• You add more SKUs

• Start selling on another channel

• Open another warehouse or retail location

• Start managing wholesale + ecommerce together

That’s usually when inventory starts getting messy fast.

Not in a dramatic way either. More like:

• Stock counts stop matching

• Someone oversells a product

• Reordering becomes reactive

• Teams spend hours reconciling numbers every week

We see a lot of businesses hit that point before moving into systems like Cin7 to centralize inventory, purchasing, forecasting, and order management.

For some companies the breaking point is 200 SKUs.

For others it’s adding Amazon or wholesale.

What was the thing that made your inventory process start falling apart?

Most inventory problems don’t start with one huge mistake.

They usually start with small things like:

• A spreadsheet that hasn’t been updated

• A supplier delay nobody factored in

• Sales channels all showing different numbers

• A “gut feeling” reorder decision

• Teams working from different data

Then suddenly:

• Bestsellers go out of stock

• Slow-moving inventory piles up

• Cash gets tied up in products that aren’t moving

• Ops teams spend hours manually reconciling numbers

One thing we see often with growing SMBs is that forecasting itself usually isn’t the real issue.

The bigger issue is fragmented systems and outdated workflows making forecasting harder than it needs to be.

A few things that tend to improve forecasting fast:

• Having one source of truth for inventory + sales data

• Reviewing forecasts regularly instead of quarterly panic checks

• Accounting for lead times and seasonality consistently

• Getting purchasing, ops, and sales teams aligned on the same numbers

That’s also why more businesses are moving away from spreadsheet-heavy forecasting toward connected systems with AI-assisted planning.

Cin7’s ForesightAI, for example, analyzes historical sales, emerging demand patterns, seasonality, supplier lead times, and runs data through roughly 100 forecasting models to help teams make smarter replenishment decisions automatically.

The goal isn’t perfect forecasting. It’s reducing the number of expensive surprises. Learn more:

Fuel and shipping costs go up… and suddenly every fulfillment decision matters more.

One thing a lot of product businesses don’t realize is that inventory software can actually help reduce shipping costs behind the scenes.

For example, when inventory is spread across multiple warehouses or 3PLs, Cin7 can help route orders from the most efficient fulfillment location based on available stock.

That can mean:

• Shorter shipping distances

• Lower fulfillment costs

• Faster delivery times

• Less inventory imbalance between locations

Instead of manually deciding: “Which warehouse should this order ship from?”

The system helps automate it based on inventory availability and fulfillment logic.

It becomes especially useful when you’re managing:

• Multiple warehouses

• Regional inventory

• 3PL partners

• Shopify + wholesale + marketplaces together

Most teams think about inventory software as “stock tracking.”

But operationally, it can also impact:

• Shipping costs

• Fulfillment speed

• Margin protection

• Inventory allocation decisions

Especially when freight costs start climbing.

What’s been the biggest challenge for your team lately: shipping costs, inventory visibility, or fulfillment speed?

Sales tax gets complicated fast once you start selling across across multiple states, countries or channels.

Different tax jurisdictions, changing rates, exemptions, nexus rules… managing it manually becomes a huge operational headache.

Cin7 Core integrates with Avalara to help automate a lot of that process.

With the integration, teams can:

• Automatically calculate sales tax on invoices

• Apply tax rates based on specific customer addresses

• Assign product-level tax codes

• Handle tax exemptions by customer or transaction

• Sync committed sales transactions into Avalara automatically

The integration also helps simplify returns and reporting by connecting inventory, order processing, and tax compliance in one workflow.

One interesting part is that tax calculations happen directly inside Cin7 Core when sales quotes, orders, or invoices are authorized, so teams aren’t manually trying to calculate rates across jurisdictions.

For growing product businesses selling across multiple regions, that can remove a lot of manual work and reduce compliance risk.

Anyone here using Avalara with their inventory or ERP system today? Let us know in the comments!

A lot of product businesses scale from: Shopify → Shopify + Amazon → Shopify + Amazon + wholesale (or retail)

On paper, it sounds like growth. In reality, this is usually where operations start to crack.

The first things we see break:

• Inventory accuracy across channels

• Order routing and fulfillment visibility

• Reordering and demand planning

• Margin tracking (fees, shipping, channel costs)

• Errors from manual work multiplying (spreadsheets everywhere)

It’s not usually one big failure. It’s a bunch of small inefficiencies stacking up.

Especially when:

• Each channel records sales differently

• Inventory isn’t synced in real time

• Purchasing isn’t connected to actual demand

• Teams are reconciling data at the end of every week/month

At some point, the question becomes less about “how do we sell more?” and more about “how do we keep control as we scale?”

For teams using systems like Cin7, this is usually where centralizing inventory, orders, and purchasing starts to matter.

But we are curious how others experienced this. What was the first thing that broke when you added a second or third sales channel?

If you’re using Square for in-person sales, one of the biggest gaps shows up behind the scenes… inventory.

Square is great at selling. But once you’re dealing with multiple channels, locations, or purchasing, things can get messy fast. That’s where Cin7 comes in!

When you connect Square with Cin7, a few things happen automatically:

• Square sales flow into Cin7 and update inventory in real time

• Stock levels sync across all your other channels (not just in-store)

• Products can be managed in one place and pushed to Square

• Purchasing and replenishment happen centrally

So instead of:

• End-of-day manual counts

• Guessing what’s actually in stock

• Overselling across channels

You’re working off one connected system. It’s especially useful if you’re:

• Running retail + ecommerce (Shopify, Amazon, etc.)

• Managing multiple store locations

• Trying to get better control over purchasing and stock levels

Square handles the checkout experience. Cin7 handles everything behind it like inventory, purchasing, forecasting, and reporting.

Together, it’s basically front-of-house + back-of-house working in sync. If this sounds interesting to you, check out:

Once a Shopify store starts growing, inventory usually becomes the bottleneck pretty quickly.

What works at the beginning (manual updates, spreadsheets, basic Shopify tools) starts to break when you add more SKUs, sales channels or additional Shopify stores, or locations.

There are 1,000+ inventory apps in the Shopify ecosystem now, but most fall into a few buckets:

• All-in-one inventory systems (multi-channel, warehouses, purchasing)

• Forecasting / planning tools

• Fulfillment / 3PL-focused tools

• Lightweight syncing or alert tools

The apps that tend to make the biggest impact usually handle:

• Real-time stock updates across channels

• Order routing to warehouses or 3PLs

• Multi-location inventory tracking

• Demand forecasting / reorder support

Otherwise, you end up with:

• Overselling across channels

• Inventory mismatches

• Manual reconciliation between systems

For teams scaling beyond a single store, the shift is usually toward something more centralized.

Tools like Cin7, for example, sit between Shopify, warehouses, and accounting, so inventory, orders, and stock levels stay synced without manual updates.

Other tools lean more niche:

• Katana → manufacturing workflows

• ShipBob → fulfillment

• Thrive → retail + POS syncing

• Stock Sync / Sellbrite → lighter, budget-friendly options

• Stocky → built-in Shopify tool (but being phased out, end of life August 31)

The tricky part isn’t finding a tool, it’s choosing one that actually fits how your business operates.

If helpful, we pulled together a breakdown of 21 Shopify inventory apps and where they fit: